The dominance in viewership of short duration T20 Cricket

Approximately a decade ago, it was an adventure into the unknown with the first T20 Cricket World Cup. Not that T20 cricket wasn’t played before the world Cup, but the T20 world Cup just added the sauces to the Subway and made the whole format customer ready!

It was with the victory of India in the first T20 world Cup where things began to change. The Indian Premier League was established and a platform was created for players to perform and earn a great amount of recognition and wealth within a short span of just two months. Viewership of the T20 format of the game increased heavily too – So much so that Broadcasters have been spending almost Rs. 55 Cr worth of investments on just a Single IPL game!
The result of this enormous shift in viewership had clear impacts. It hit the ODIs and Test Internationals hard! In 2015, it was reported that viewership of longer formats of Cricket dropped by almost 40 percent!

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One of the big names among sports channels, the Star India group – started increasing their number of sports channels to meet the exponentially rising demand. Their re-branding has made them capable of broadcasting various sports, and multiple formats to meet every viewer’s demand. It has also earned them Broadcasting rights to most of the Cricket matches that India play.

Looking back at T20 cricket, almost every country has its own T20 league today that runs for about 2 months. These leagues have also given every country good cricketers. David Warner came into the frame only after the Big Bash League, and is now one of the senior-most members of the Australian cricket team. Hardik Pandya came into limelight after the IPL, and has become one of the most versatile all-rounders of the Indian cricket team.
During earlier days, players used to get promoted from Test cricket to limited overs but now the opposite is also happening! That’s how time and things change!

The dominance of T20 cricket, however has taken out almost all interest from Test cricket. Most grounds are half empty during test and ODI matches. The funny part being, stadium ticket prices for T20 cricket, that lasts for 4 hours are mostly at par with Test match cricket prices, which last much longer!

Sometime ago former Indian captain, Rahul Dravid spoke about how it would be very interesting to see the way kids think in the next 10 years. Because this generation will see more of T20 cricket and might like to opt out of 5 day format, as there is already a huge pay in the shortest format.

With the world growing and things changing so rapidly, it will be interesting to see what’s more in store. Will we have a T-10, a T-5 ? Will Test Cricket survive amidst all this?
Well, only time will tell.